Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., futilely urged the chamber to limit debate to 30 hours, saying, "Americans want something done about these godawful assault weapons."
The bill's backers said they would make a second attempt at curtailing debate later in the week.
Biden said the National Rifle Association was behind Tuesday's vote and said that if the time limit fails on the second try, opening the door to a filibuster, "it will be the end of the official crime bill."
Both he and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, said they thought they could find enough votes to cap the debate at 30 hours.
On the roll call, 54 senators voted in favor of limiting debate, while 37 senators opposed such a curb. Sponsors needed 60 votes to impose the time limit.
Forty-four Democrats and 10 Republicans voted for imposing cloture on the debate, while 31 Republicans and six Democrats were opposed.
Mitchell said, however, that Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas was among those calling for a second vote on the measure, whose death-penalty as well as gun-control provisions are likely to figure in some fall re-election campaigns.
The bill would bar imports and domestic manufacture of nine semiautomatic rifles and pistols.
Other provisions would impose the death penalty for 30 federal crimes, overhaul the appeals system and sanction the use of evidence gathered with faulty warrants if the police acted in good faith.
Sponsors said they needed to limit debate if they were to have any hope of passage. As of noon, more than 230 proposed amendments were in the hopper, with the promise of more to come. They ranged from mandatory life sentences for rapists with AIDS to commemorative medals for the Yosemite National Park centennial.
The bill's supporters said debating each of them would guarantee critics the power to stall on any final vote.
"If cloture is invoked, the crime bill will pass, if cloture is not invoked the crime bill will die," Biden said. But he added that there could be a second attempt to choke off debate within a few days.
No senators stood up to speak against limiting debate, although in fiery floor exchanges two weeks ago Western lawmakers declared that many of their constituents were hunters and gun collectors and considered any restriction on ownership to be a violation of their rights.
Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., recalled how his grandmother used to "pack a little iron" in the frontier era.
Efforts to curb military-style semiautomatic weapons, sometimes called assault weapons, got under way in earnest in January 1989 after a deranged man with such a rifle sprayed a Stockton, Calif., schoolyard, leaving five people dead and 30 others wounded.
The Bush administration has been pressing for the death-penalty provisions as part of the president's crime package. It also sought a far more stringent overhaul of the habeas corpus review process, under which defendants can appeal their convictions on constitutional grounds.
by CNB